The Irish Timesreviews Charlie Parr in Dublin

Charlie Parr

Crawdaddy, Dublin

Charlie Parr’s playing style is equal parts frenetic and fragile. He frails about his National resonator guitar at staggering speed, plucking bunches of notes off the frets in thick handfuls, without sifting out any of their grit. His lyrics and his carefully constructed songs might flatter to deceive with an assumed air of simplicity, but these are powerful, potent tracks, laden with images of labour strikes, Depression-era laments, and astute observations of the rural US today, all played in a kind of thrumming, timeless style that sounds like it could have come out of any decade.

Here, Parr tears through many of the tracks at a blistering pace, sometimes speeding up songs that perhaps deserve a bit more subtlety. But his rich and roughshod voice never betrays any hint of being harried. His lines make their own sweet way into the crowd when they’re ready and the lyrics flicker with crafted emotion.

In 1922, Parr sings about how he "gave all my money to the government/ I don't quite know how it got spent/ but the banks are coming for my deeds, boys". In Last Payday at Coal Creek he frails his way through its clockwork chord structures, clicking and shifting through the notes, but there's a dark undertow in the lyrics that remind that this is no rollicking hoedown; the song is about the Fraterville mining disaster, when workers, trapped by an explosion, wrote farewell letters as they waited for their air to run out. The pace is blistering, but this track loses none of its weight. Just Like Today is hushed, haunting and fragile as a candle flame.

If Parr seems sometimes in a hurry, he's a model of composure when it comes to covers. On the spectacular God Moves on the Waterby Blind Willie Johnson, he plays with more swagger in his style, as if he is safe in the knowledge that this is a great song; but Parr's work is good enough to put on the rack beside any vintage blues track.

Before coming to Ireland, Parr tried to fix his guitar with a soldering iron and he struggles slightly with the tuning between songs. “That’s the first of many unprofessional things I will do tonight,” he says, his sense of humour always placing himself firmly at the butt of the joke.

He also bought a new pair of trousers before leaving, that he struggled to break in before coming up with a rapid solution: “Tie them to the back of your car, drive all ’round town for the day, and if they’re still there, they’re good pants.”

But then it’s back to business – a closing encore of 29 and Jubilee seals a searing set and within minutes Parr is at the door, happily shaking hands and thanking folks for coming out tonight. The work is done for another day, and the night is over all to soon.

LAURENCE MACKIN